In the battle of smug liberals vs. conservative trolls, the former Democratic nominee makes a strong showing.

"If you look at the map of the United States, there's all that red in the middle where Trump won," said Hillary Clinton this weekend at a speech in Mumbai. "I win the coast….I won the places that represent two-thirds of America's gross domestic product. So I won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward. And his whole campaign, 'Make America Great Again,' was looking backwards."

Clinton goes on to explain that Trump's message was: "You didn't like black people getting rights, you don't like women, you know, getting jobs. You…see that Indian-American succeeding more than you are. Whatever your problem is, I'm going to solve it."

This weekend in The New York Times, I pondered the relationship between smug liberalism and trollish conservatism. I can only assume that it's because Donald Trump has been extremely busy with some H.R. matters that he hasn't made time for a retaliatory tweet about this speech. But these comments are a great example of the liberal side of the rhetorical breakdown in American politics:

Modern American political discourse can seem disjointed to the point of absurdism. But the problem isn't just filter bubbles, echo chambers or alternative facts. It's tone: When the loudest voices on the left talk about people on the right as either beyond the pale or dupes of their betters, it is with an air of barely concealed smugness. Right-wingers, for their part, increasingly respond with a churlish "Oh, yeah? Hold my beer," and then double down on whatever politically incorrect sentiment brought on the disdain in the first place.

These two terrible tendencies now feed off each other, growing stronger every day: the more smugness, the more satisfying it is to poke holes in it; the more toxic the trolling, the greater the sense of moral superiority. The result: an odoriferous stew of political rhetoric that is nearly irresistible to those on the inside and confusingly abhorrent to those on the outside.

I dug into the specific problem of what happens when you genuinely believe the narrative that Trump voters are primarily racist, sexist, or puppets—as Clinton clearly does—a bit more in a conversation with Issac Chotiner at Slate yesterday, as well at the idea that if Clinton's narrative is true, that she is obliged to tell it:

Slate: OK, but I'm a writer. You're a writer. I want to say what I think. I still haven't quite figured out how to not smugly say that I think Donald Trump is a con man taking advantage of his voters. I don't think every Republican, or the entire Republican Party's platform, or libertarianism, or social conservatism, is just about conning voters. I do think Donald Trump is a con man, and he is essentially conning his voters to enrich his family. I don't know how to say that without sounding smug and without immediately telling essentially everyone who voted for him, "You got conned." I just don't quite understand how to get out of that pickle when you have someone like Donald Trump as president.

KMW: Your response is very similar to a significant portion of the response to this piece. That is to say, of the people who replied to me on Twitter and elsewhere, the vast majority of people who were "team smug" offered some variant of what you just said, like, "But we're right, and they're wrong, and so what do we do?" All due respect to you and all those people, that's precisely the problem. You are the problem. That is to say, just because you have an analysis of why someone voted the way they did and you think that it's wrong, you don't have to say it out loud. Having said it out loud lots of times, and it having not been effective as a rhetorical move to shift the political landscape in the direction that you want, why not try another tack?

Clinton is clearly unlikely to be swayed into believing another version of the story about how she lost, and her belief is shared by many. Her account might even be the correct one (though as I said in the Times and at Slate in my uneasy oracular role, I don't think that's the case). But she's certainly not helping her political party find its footing in the new landscape, nor is she improving the quality of the discourse by rehearsing this version yet again.

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She is no less horrible of a human being than Trump is. Her cult following is just as confounding to me as Trump’s is. It’s actually more infuriating because it’s led by a bunch of people who consider themselves to be enlightened intellectuals.

Oh I’m not making comparisons, just commenting on her past. Her past is the number one reason why she wasn’t elected. This was a shit sandwich election, and voters picked the one with a hint of Dijon mustard aftertaste.

Way, way, way too early to make such a statement. Now that Rexxon has departed, you will now witness the power of this fully operational Death Star. Or not. Tillerson was the only thing in Trumps menagere of deplorables that gave me a bit of hope he wouldn’t step on his own dick and throw us into another war. That hope has left me today. Good luck America, buckle up…

Did Trump create a fake charity that promised to help earthwuake victims and then not only not do so in any significant fashion but used a chunk of that money to pay for his daughter’s wedding that I happen to be unaware of?

Since she already mostly looks the part, perhaps she could officially go trans! This may or may not make her the first female president, depending on how someone views trans peoples gender, but I’m sure with such MASSIVE virtue signalling it would push her over the edge with all those white middle class midwest voters she lost last time!!!

Quote: There is a smug style in American liberalism. It has been growing these past decades. It is a way of conducting politics, predicated on the belief that American life is not divided by moral difference or policy divergence ? not really ?but by the failure of half the country to know what’s good for them. ? It has led an American ideology hitherto responsible for a great share of the good accomplished over the past century of our political life to a posture of reaction and disrespect: a condescending, defensive sneer toward any person or movement outside of its consensus, dressed up as a monopoly on reason.

What most people regardless of their politics do not understand is that reason is value neutral. You can reason your way to any position if you just start out with the right assumptions. That is why when people use reason to justify horrible acts it is called “rationalization”.

So when people call someone else’ position “irrational”, they are really just saying “you don’t share my perceptions and values”. I find that most political debates are two sides with fundamentally opposed values or perception of the facts talking past each other and calling each other irrational.

I think that’s the big insight. It’s also why some amount of emotion is required for any effective argument. Those core values come from emotion, we can build off that logically in an attempt to maximize or minimize some value, but that value must be asserted a priori.

I think you have to understand what people’s perceptions and values are if you want to persuade them. If you don’t, then you will just talk past them. For example, you can’t convince someone to support an economic policy on the basis of it being more efficient when that person values security over efficiency or they see that overall efficiency coming at their expense. Time and again people will argue for economic policies in the name of efficiency when those policies benefit them personally and then turn around and call someone who isn’t benefited by it and objects irrational. Their interests may not be the ones who should win the day, but their position isn’t irrational and your position is no less self-interested or more legitimate than theirs.

I tend to use ‘irrational’ in the sense that someone’s position is not rational – that is, their conclusions are unbalanced. “Trump doesn’t want the military to admit transgender people, therefore Trump hates LGBT people and is literally Hitler. LGBT people should now live in fear,” or, “Trump calls CNN and NYT fake news, therefore Trump is attacking freedom of the press because he is literally Hitler.”

Damikesc, I’d agree. The southern public high school I went to was very “diverse” and integrated/fluid. The “elite” college I went to, full of people from Cali and New York and such, was a different kind of diverse and loved to talk about diversity, but I was thrown off because the atmosphere was actually extremely segregated. The more “socially conscious” people are the more self conscious they become, and the less comfortable everyone is. Everyone, that is, who is naturally resistant to arbitrary rules and regulations. Progressives are people who like PC because the strict illogic of PC is what enables them to succeed and gives them a competitive advantage against more inherently gifted natures.

Herein is the battle between collectivism and individuality – it is the naturally dependent vs those capable and inclined toward independence. As civilization develops, there is a necessity to guard against those who would arrange the system to exclude self reliance, which is already difficult as cooperation can provide advantages to even the self-reliant. Cooperation is very different than compulsion though. Dependent natures (collectivists) compulsively seek to require All to live according to dependent conditions. That is why all socialism is totalitarian.

I came from a small southern town which wasn’t very diverse but that doesn’t mean that all of those people were terrible and racist simply because we didn’t have a lot of minority students. Believe it or not, small town white southerners can be open minded, too. And that’s where she missed her mark.

She had no issue hiding her snobbery and it pissed people off. You can’t drive past half of the country and only show enthusiasm for the exciting parts, of which whom, you are hanging out with only the elite of the elite.

Such responses are irrational. One may be uncomfortable with Trump’s positions in those cases, and disagree/oppose/criticize them, but they so often immediately jump to the hyperbolic or superlative. That is what I’d characterize as irrational.

This has been a long time coming, and establishment Democrats have learned nothing. However, there are a lot of people on the left who do get it, and it behooves us to not lump them in with “Democrats”.

What exactly do these people get? What positions can you hold on the left now that do not require you to have contempt for middle and lower class white people and especially straight white people? Moreover, if there are such positions, how can you renounce all of the leftist’ positions that require such hatred and still fairly call yourself on the left?

What positions can you hold on the left now that do not require you to have contempt for middle and lower class white people and especially straight white people?

Glenn Greenwald, for instance, is someone who would describe himself as “on the left” who’s done some of the best Journalism on the election and its aftermath, and understands the landscape. Watch the video I posted in the “Republicans conclude” thread.

Brenan O’Neill who describes himself as a “cultural marxist” was pro Brexit, anti Hillary, anti-establishment, has a full trust in the individual to make his or her own choices and maintains utter contempt for PC culture, SJW tactics and New Feminism. He explains his position on these issues as not a result of him moving away from the left, but the left moving away from him.

Greenwald is persona nongrata among leftists. While I do respect his integrity for telling the truth about abuses of power under Obama, I don’t see how you could call him particularly friendly towards the people we are talking about. As far as O”Neill goes, being a culture Marxist necessarily entails having some economic class that is the designated scape goat. Maybe he doesn’t hate middle and lower class Americans who are not part of the minority grievance machine. But, I think it takes more than just hating PC to be that way. What positions does he hold that don’t show utter contempt for the average American who doesn’t want their community overrun with third world refugees and is tired of watching his standard of living go down in the name of globalism?

Not everything is about Immigration, John. All I know is my youtube feed is starting to fill up with a combination of “conservative” and “progressive” channels. It’s amazing how similar the sentiments are on certain issues. Many of these “intersectional” (if I may) sentiments are a distrust of elite institutions, a hatred of the Democratic party– and a belief that the Democrats are a corrupt, lying bunch of thieves which have nothing but disdain for the working class (race not mentioned). A distrust of either “corporate” or “mainstream” media– however you choose to describe it. A complete rejection of the “Russian meddling” narrative. The list goes on.

I’m starting to think that there is more common ground than I once believed. Like Paul says, you can go on Youtube and find people of all kinds of political views who have just had enough of the SJW identity politics shit. I’m a little hopeful that actual liberalism may have a resurgence in the center-left. The far left is just so insane now that they are driving off a lot of people who used to think they were on the same side.

Thomas Frank writes from the left and was heavily critical of Hillary and her fawning press throughout the election cycle. I went to see him speak recently, actually. He’s very critical of globalism and what it’s done to labor. He’s also fiercely critical of the smug Clintonite hatred of poor, blue collar, and displaced suburban and rural whites, saying “you’re never going to get them to agree with anything you say if you start out by talking like you’re better than they are or they’re nothing but racist troglodytes.”

He’s pro-union, which I could never get behind, but he never talks much about “identity politics” or feminist glurge. His schtick is mostly about labor and what the last 40 years of both parties have done to it. A Frankian candidate would probably be another Bernie or socialist, but he is highly critical of the Dems elitist contempt for average people.

Identity politics and SJWs are an inevitable consequence of collectivism. Left vs right has become largely meaningless, as the approaches that used to characterize have become more confused. For example, anti-government sentiment is a position traditionally defined as being on the left, yet we see Leftists push for ever expanding government scale. Even as they decry the current government, socialists pursue more government. Strict constitutionalists are commonly place on the right, though such a position favors relatively less restriction on people. The proper opposition is collective vs individual. What else really matters but the question of sovereignty (individual vs state) and its extent?

Collectivism cannot help but create identity politics and SJWs as it’s fundamental perspective is that of the group. Anybody that pursues collectivism, whether they describe themselves as left or right leaning, must understand that they are pursuing exactly that which we see in political correctness and SJWs – not as an accident, but as an inevitability.

This has been a problem on the Left since the Jacobins instituted The Terror because their great rationalizations of society annoyed so many people on the provinces that those people started to resist the Revolution.

Hillary said nothing wrong. Successful people with good jobs vote Democrat. Pathetic losers with no money vote Republican. You can tell this is the case because blue states are on average richer than red states. So it logically follows that the poor vote Republican.

If right-wing snowflakes get upset by these facts, that’s their problem.

You can tell this is the case because blue states are on average richer than red states

Ah, but these places have much higher INEQUALITY. In other words, wealthy progs who can live off their investments are supported by an underpaid peasant class who cuts their grass, raises their kids, and cleans their houses. Now go guilt some OBL bot, and come back when you find some of these wealthy successful people who are willing to redistribute some of their wealth through a huge tax hit.

I live in Southeast WI. A few years ago we took my son to California to look at a college. We landed in LA and drove a couple hours north on non-interstate roads. At the end of the drive my son commented on the wealth disparity. Compared to our area the poor are even poorer and the rich are even richer. My son was 17 years old and he could see the difference just from driving around.

Wealth disparity is a popular metric because it’s pretty simple. But some of it is naturally true that in a rich area there will be more disparity, because you can only be so poor but there is no practical limit on how rich you can be. Maybe it’s bad, I don’t know. Certainly it’s a point against many of those who choose to make income disparity a major issue, but I’m not sold overall on how important it is.

I think the biggest thing to note is the cultural disparity. That socially, these two groups are increasingly isolated from one another. They don’t know each other, they don’t work with each other, they don’t go to the same leisure activities. They do not interact. This is a very troubling trend I think, and it’s been Charles Murray’s major topic for the last while.

It’s why, I think, we have something I’m often fascinated about. When you see a certain type of elite, probably more intellectual than wealth but there is a lot of crossover, who talks about the poor in glowing terms. But simultaneously is derisive about many things a lot of lower class people care deeply about. It’s an interesting isolation.

“Southeast WI” being essentially white-flight suburbs of Chicago and Milwaukee, it’s not surprising your sheltered son hadn’t seen income disparity up-close and in person yet. News flash! Income disparity in Wisconsin is on the rise! I trust that you guys don’t go up to Milwaukee very often?

Correction: People who went to college, and got indoctrinated, and then proceeded to work cubicle jobs, tend to vote Democrat. The very wealthy, like business owners and high level managers, tend to vote more Republican because they “get it.”

Basically mildly intelligent cogs in the machine vote Dem, and the actual gifted people tend to be libertarian or conservative.

ALSO your real world standard of living, when comparing income to cost of living, is highest in the midwest, south, and southwest… NOT the coasts. Funny that. For all the smugness of Californians who think they’re making the big bucks, that go in Des Moines or Kansas City actually has a bigger house, nicer car, more money in the bank, and can afford to take more vacations! Who is really winning there?

This actually makes sense. Progressives believe in history marching forward into progress, and conservatives believe history is degenerating from an idyllic past. Libertarians recognize that the chart of human progress does not follow a monotonic trajectory.

IDK, it seems like Progressives believe that we *must* march history forward into progress. If progress just happened, you wouldn’t need government or social advocacy. Conservatives/libertarians just recognize that not every action (social or otherwise) implies progress and distinguishing them on the terms you have is ceding the progressive view of both ideologies. Conservatives don’t actually want to go back to the 1950s any more than libertarians want to go back to the 1850s or 1776 or whatever.

Wasn’t it fairly common for congresscritters to cudgel one another over the head with their walking sticks back then? I’ll take that state of affairs.

I’m going to assume, as a libertarian, you metaphorically want fewer elected representatives and/or representatives to be more openly hostile to each other. Rather than be a progressive asshole and assert you want women back in the kitchen, negroes, mexicans, and chinamen working on the railroad, and 3 of your 6 children to die before the age of 2.

Marx believed in a march of history. Progressives believe not that the future is certain, but the opposite. They believe it can be made how the see fit. That the elite ought to place walls around the various choices of the yet-un-improved so as to mold him into an acceptable and perfected man. Thus, with perfect men you can have a perfect society and then perfect future. The mechanism for molding man is force, but naked force is vile. That is why the Progressive uses the state… It is the refined application of violence couched with a veneer or moral superiority.

” I do think Donald Trump is a con man, and he is essentially conning his voters to enrich his family. I don’t know how to say that without sounding smug and without immediately telling essentially everyone who voted for him.”

These people still don’t understand: Every politician is a con man using his supporters to enrich himself. I presume he supported Hillary Clinton, who has done extremely well for herself from her career in public ‘service’.

Also, that being said, Donald Trump has almost certainly lost money by running for President. Most of his wealth comes from urban real estate and entertainment, two fields that are almost exclusively dominated by the Democratic party. He will never go back to what he was doing before running for President, and neither will any member of his family.

The only thing different about Trump is he’s bad at it. Also, only the most ardent Trumpsters actually fall for his shtick. Most Trump voters fully knew what they were getting. Democrats need to stop confusing the die-hard Trump supporters with Trump voters.

Judging by the results, I do not see how you can say Trump is a bad President unless your measure of a President is how well they kiss the media’s ass. I think most people judge Trump by his actions and don’t give a shit what he says or take any of it that seriously. The only people who do are people looking to virtue signal their alleged superiority over those evil Trumpsters, whoever the fuck they are.

The last part of your comment is lost of both the left and the diehard Trump supporters. I voted for Johnson (blech) but was super tempted to vote for the giant FU to the system and go for Trump. I KNOW he’s a brute. I know he’s unprincipled. I know he’s unpredictable. But I also knew that one of two things were certain… he would be better than what we’ve had in song time (and he somehow seems to managed this, although not perfect by ANY measure… It’s just a bar so low it’s setting on the ground) OR he would break the system. The establishment wasn’t going to let him be worse because that would mean playing with their ball and setting at their table. Either outcome was vastly better than the Hildabeast.

The difference is that we’re fighting to be left alone, and they’re fighting to control and enslave us. Dealing with them is like fending off a home invasion. So if something bad happens to them. It’s purely self defense.

They should be given a chance to abandon their slaver Marxist beliefs. If they won’t do that, and they keep coming, then any harm suffered is on them.

Oh, I fully agree with you. The problem is that they control the ‘means of production’ in the information age – media, academia, gov’t, multinationals. At the moment, I think the best we can do is to hold our ground and let them self-destruct. Avoiding their blast radius will be difficult, but more and more people are starting to see them for the psychotics they are. The more people refuse to accept their terms, the more unbalanced the progressives become. What will be key is communication. Much of what has been said in this comment section has to be disseminated to wider audiences. Simply pointing out the implications of their actions is important. The sane of us, who see the danger of progressivism, need to be better about organizing. Not necessarily for activism, but open lines of communication that can be used to bring us together in event of crisis. Progressives, as collectivists, have held a huge advantage in organization and activism. The difficult individualists have with joint action will have to be overcome and put aside. The founding fathers were able to do exactly that. At some point, the tree of liberty may have to be replanted.

Honestly, I don’t have any problem with violence in the right situation. I’m no psycho, and would never go randomly hurt people. But people who make non-violence this overly holy thing, that you cannot ever use force… They’re idiots.

Think about it. If the Founding Fathers had the mindset of people like the writers at Reason, we’d still have the queen on our money, and be living in a socialist hell scape with no freedom of speech, no gun rights, massive taxes, etc.

The founders were reasonable men. Jefferson was a straight up poof of an intellectual really. But they realized force was needed to fix their problems. I’m not saying we’re at the point where we MUST use force… But, depending on how things go, we might not be too far from it. I don’t think we’re in 1776 just yet, but there were plenty of grievances in the 1760s, and we could well be in the late 1760s…

Vek, Agreed. I honestly think we’re doomed without violence, and non-violence as an absolute value is simply suicide. My point above, unfortunately, is that I don’t think we’re at the point where violence will be acceptable to a large enough amount of the population. At this point, I think it would backfire. But I’m also a firm believer that the 9th amendment was included as, implicitly in conjunction with the other 9 amendments, the right to violent revolution. As an aside, the founders were big on numeric symbolism. This needs to be taken into account when analyzing the Constitution. And these men were revolutionaries – they foresaw the necessity of such.

…In his book, Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others, David Livingstone Smith examined how dehumanization goes hand-in-hand with racism and genocide. Smith revealed a long-standing pattern whereby people, despite acknowledging that other human beings appear to be human, often maintain that in their essence?whatever that means?these others continue to be less than human. It is thus entirely possible that comparably stubborn biases will persist even if our biological continuity with other living things becomes undeniable. Moreover, people are certainly known to obscure inconvenient truths: It is said that when the wife of the Bishop of Worcester heard of Darwin’s scandalous theory, she exclaimed “Descended from apes? My dear, let us hope that it isn’t true, but if it is true, let us hope that it does not become widely known!”

On the other hand, it seems equally likely that faced with individuals who are clearly intermediate between human and ape, it will become painfully obvious that a rigid distinction between the two is no longer tenable. But what about those presumably unfortunate individuals thereby produced? Neither fish nor fowl, wouldn’t they find themselves intolerably unspecified and inchoate, doomed to a living hell of biological and social indeterminacy? This is possible, but it is at least arguable that the ultimate benefit of teaching human beings their true nature would be worth the sacrifice paid by a few unfortunates….

For what it is worth, I support the Great Ape Project that seeks to grant some rights to the great apes. I am also open to rights for dolphins and elephants. I say this as a hunter that supports trophy hunting.

Shorter version: Humans already treat chimps badly because we view them as inferior, so let’s make human-chimp hybrids who will still be inferior and still be treated badly, but will be better able to understand their predicament.

The problem here is that there ARE gradients of how smart humans are. I still think everybody is owed certain basic rights, but to deny that some people are inferior to others is preposterous. Einstein IS better than some guy with down syndrome.

Harsh but true! Nature is a very cruel bitch, but that’s not my fault. I’m just a humble player, I didn’t invent the game!

What are the views that conservative trolls are supposedly doubling down on? Mangu Ward doesn’t mention them. The article seems a bit thin without any actual examples of what she is talking about. What views does Ward think are so beyond the pale that even to hold them makes one a “Troll”?

Liberals are smug but that can’t be pointed out without also saying how conservatives are just as bad, even if we can’t really tell you why. This is why people think the staff at reason are just leftists playing pretend for a paycheck.

And those would be trollish why? What is trollish about saying that you can reasonably think Trump is a bad President because you don’t like his policies but cannot reasonably say he is any worse than any other President whose policies you don’t like? What is trollish about saying reason is value neutral? Or that the elite were more afraid of Trump succeeding than they were of him failing?

What about those positions makes me a troll? What about any of them is unreasonable or even wrong?

If you are going to make an accusation, you should have to back it up. If you can’t, then shut the fuck up and stop wasting my time.

Hey listen, you said you wanted examples and I told you where to find them. I get that you don’t think you’re being dumb or trollish but take a moment to think about what someone who has different views from yours might think. You made a pretty decent comment about people starting from different assumptions just a couple minutes ago. Apply that.

You gave examples and I don’t see why they are trollish. So, please explain why those positions are unreasonable. You must have a reason for thinking they are. Give it. I don’t see how asking for an explanation for why my posts on here are unreasonable is well unreasonable. So either back up your claim with an explanation or take it back.

Suppose they are. Just because they are my thoughts doesn’t mean I can’t see the error of them. If they are trollish explain why. If you can’t, then perhaps they are not.

You have yet to explain why you think these positions are trollish. Tell us your thoughts on this. Why do you think that? If you can’t do that, then you must not really think that and were just talking shit like you usually do. If you can, then do so.

Sorry but “you would never understand because they are your thoughts” isn’t an answer. Give your reasoning for thinking that.

YOU said they were trolling. YOU explain what makes them so. That’s how making a claim works. If my students wrote a paper and posited a thesis but the rest of the paper was “Now you, reader, go figure out why I’m right,” they would get an F.

I gave my reasons three times now and you keep refusing them. I don’t know what else to tell you. Your sincerely held beliefs are someone else’s trolling. Just like someone else’s sincerely held beliefs are proggie emoting.

And I absolutely understand why someone would disagree with Trump’s policies as president. Whether a policy is good or bad is a value judgment. What I do not see is how you could think that Trump is any worse than any other President who has policies that you don’t like. It is one thing to say “I think Trump is doing bad things as president”. It is quite another thing to say Trump is doing things which are a threat to the world or the Republic such that he is something worse than just a President whose policies you don’t like.

That is not failing to understand what other people think. It is the exact opposite.

What I do not see is how you could think that Trump is any worse than any other President who has policies that you don’t like.

I don’t, but for some reason there are people who do. Unfortunately I don’t possess the spectacular insight into why other people think the way they do that many of the other commenters here seem to possess.

There are people who do. And if those positions are reasonable, then the reasons behind them should either be apparent or have been articulated by the people who hold these positions. You don’t need to read someone’s mind to conclude that a position is unreasonable or held for reasons other than necessary conclusions or reasonable assumptions given the facts. If a position is reasonable but just wrong, that should be obvious from the reasoning given in support of it.

In this case, I have yet to hear any set of facts that could cause a reasonable person to conclude Trump is crazy, inordinately stupid or a uniquely bad President. That doesn’t require the power of mind reading. It just requires looking at the facts and arguments given.

Imagine that you’re something of a utilitarian. The morality of an act is judged by it’s consequences.

Now, imagine that you’re fighting a political battle with somebody who disagrees with you, but is just ordinarily bad. You’re limited in what you can, as a utilitarian, justify doing to combat them; You can’t do so much harm in fighting them that the sum of that harm and your (Presumably…) better policy is worse than your foe’s policies without the collateral damage of fighting them. Utilitarian ethics limits the tactics you can resort to, possibly to the point where you might lose.

Now, imagine that you’re fighting a political battle with somebody who doesn’t just disagree with you, but who is evil incarnate. A racist, sexist monster, the next Hitler, possibly even a genocide if not stopped.

Suddenly you’re free to engage in much worse tactics, and still be the good guy, because what you’re averting if you win is so much worse. Anything short of marching your foes into ovens is ok, if you’re fighting the next Hitler!

That’s the dynamic here, I think: For utilitarians, imagining the person you’re opposing to be a horrible evil is liberating, so they have a strong incentive to exaggerate how bad their foes are.

He who wants an excuse for becoming a dragon must imagine himself to be hunting dragons.”, Nietzsche might have said.

That is a very good point, Brett. Also, imagining your opponent to be some great monster is a way of exaggerating your own importance. If people on the other side are just ordinary people who have a different opinion, then my politics and my political opinions are not that important. But if they are some great evil, then my politics and my opinions are a matter of great moral importance. I call it French Resistance syndrome. People want to believe they are fighting in the French Resistance instead of the ordinary people arguing over the ordinary issues they are.

And I absolutely understand why someone would disagree with Trump’s policies as president. Whether a policy is good or bad is a value judgment. What I do not see is how you could think that Trump is any worse than any other President who has policies that you don’t like.

So, sure. I think I can separate Trump’s incompetence and preference for bad policy from his existential threat.

On the one hand, you have the return to “abstinence-only education,” opening up more natural resources for oil, gas, and mineral extraction while loosening regulatory oversight of the same, bad economic and tax policy. I’ll even allow his re-shaping of the judicial branch to fall into this bucket, because even though that will fundamentally alter the politics of the judicial branch for a generation and will likely lead to the expansion of presidential power and rollback of hard-won rights and freedoms. Just “policy I disagree with,” right?

But here’s what’s “existential”:

Trump is undermining the post-war geopolitical consensus that has empowered the U.S. and liberal west against the forces of authoritarianism. He has simply abdicated from the global stage in this respect, and his emaciated State Department means that he now has a limited toolkit for dealing even with those issues he can be bothered to focus on. (A political resolution in Afghanistan, for instance, seems unlikely without full American engagement.)

The story is becoming much the same on trade. We have the WTO for a reason: it serves American interests. But Trump can’t wrap his head around multilateral deals with state actors that are as much about American security as they are about economic prosperity. He sees everything through a mercantilist lens, and the global economy will leave us behind.

The same goes for his approach to climate change. Every year the window for avoiding the worst climate outcomes in the next century closes further, and the need to find ways to deal with the reality of climate change that we can’t avoid increases. But Trump is seriously just punting on this issue.

And then there’s Russia. We now have a president who is unlawfully choosing not to enforce the sanctions law against Russia. Despite the intelligence consensus that the Russians sought to throw the 2016 election and are working to do the same in the 2018 midterms, he has shown no leadership or resolve to resist these efforts. He can’t even bring himself to criticize Putin for engaging in politically-motivated assassinations in other nations. He is, for all intents and purposes, a Russian puppet, and you can see that in May’s reaction to the assassination attempt the other day. One gets the sense that the Europeans have realized that they’ve been out-flanked by Russia and cannot count on the U.S. to have their backs, as long as Trump is president.

“Every year the window for avoiding the worst climate outcomes in the next century closes further,”

The window was supposed to close in 1988, 1995, 2000, 2012, and 2016 according to the warmists. In reality it’s all just alarmist BS. AGW is minimal or zero. Any changes are gradual, natural, and easily overcome.

You’ve stated this well, Simon. But what looks so idyllic to you leaves me with a different impression. All that which you argue in support of, especially climate change activism/policy, is simply post-modern feudalism. The post war consensus may fight dictators… but what is the post war consensus other than a body of Lords who dictate through financial and legal regulation how the peasant masses must live?

Sparky, I think they hangup here is that for some reason KMU is calling what appear to be sincerely held beliefs to be trolling. But trolling is the opposite of sincerity. It’s saying something just to mess with people and rile them up. I

There’s plenty of reasons that KMU may absolutely abhor the views of those on the right and beappalled that they are “doubling down” on these. But to call them trolling… that is a form of delegitimization she just won’t bring to the table when dealing with the left.

Boris? Yea, Boris is a good guy. Great vodka recommendations. Btw, I hate Reasons comment system. Have to manually go back and check every article comments again just to see if there’s a reply? Wtf? How hard is a notification or records keeping? Smh

I imagine that most Reason writers would like to get a future gig at a major print or broadcast media outfit someday. Major media is left wing and they won’t be able break through unless they make the “to be sure” caveats that keeps the cocktail party invitations coming.

McCarthy was right. That’s why the left has always used him as an example of being a crazy witch hunt… To make him seem crazy, when in fact history has borne out him being correct. The communists WERE infiltrating government, academia, the media, etc. He may have been wrong about certain particulars, but he got the broad strokes totally correct.

This is why the libs are praying for Trump’s catastrophic failure no matter how badly it damages the country (especially if it badly damages the country). What does it say about your God-King style government if you can put a retarded chimpanzee in charge of the machine and the country just keeps trundling along no matter how many levers and knobs and buttons the chimpanzee fiddles with? Doesn’t that maybe suggest that what the government does and how it does it isn’t really very important?

What it suggests is that the retarded chimpanzee isn’t who you thought it was. Maybe Trump is the retarded chimpanzee or maybe the people who were in charge who fucked things up so badly are the chimps?

I know you are kidding. But in all seriousness, the idea that Trump is somehow not smart or some kind of uniquely bad President is just absurd. You can argue that Trump is a bad President because you don’t like his policies. But to say that he is somehow different and worse than any other President whose policies you don’t like is not a sensible argument.

At work I finally got a co-worker to admit that every time we argue about Trump that his only gripe is not what Trump said it did, but only how he said it or did it. I pointed out some issues where Obama said or did things in a similar way (even if not to the degree) and asked him how many time he criticised Obama. The answer we already knew. Facing the cognative dissonance created a rather amusing look on his face

I mean, I think that’s the libs worse fear, not that Trump won’t fuck up but that he can’t fuck up because, despite his title of Most Powerful Man In The World, the world really doesn’t give a shit who’s in office and it really doesn’t matter all that much.

I totally agree with that and said it before the election. The liberals were terrified that Trump would succeed and reveal how badly they had fucked things up and how stupid our self-appointed elite actually are.

Don’t worry, Trump has fucked up plenty. Really, the saving grace of this administration has been that Trump doesn’t actually like to work very much, so a lot of things he could be pushing just aren’t going much of any where.

At some point, I wish people would start seriously contemplating how we got here. Trump didn’t just come out of nowhere. What is it about our political system that candidates for office have to become increasingly outlandish just to have a shot at winning? Let’s face it: anybody remotely normal who runs for President doesn’t stand a chance.

We got here because liberals have used control of the culture to make saying any truth that they don’t like or taking any position they can’t refute vulgar and crass. So any candidate who tells the truth and takes positions that really harm liberals is going to be called rude and outlandish.

They imagine that they will somehow get Pence too, after having retaken the House, putting Pelosi in the White House, who will then install The Hag as VP. Then resign, thus putting The Hag in her rightful place, as it was her turn all along.

Clinton is Clinton, what can I say. If she had even an ounce of self-respect, she’d stay out of the spotlight at this point. Was Dewey embarrassing himself publicly more than a year after losing in an upset to Truman?

But I’m more bothered by the smug idiot from Slate 2ho was interviewing KMW. He seriously lumps in Libertarians with so-cons and such? Get an f?ing clue, dude! As a journalist, maybe he should do some reading if it doesn’t strain his brain too much.

I really don’t care which direction people who vote for turd sandwiches over giant douches are looking in. They’re authoritarian statists either way.

To leftist douche canoes like him anyone who isn’t also a leftist douche canoe all get lumped together in a category of “deplorables,” AKA, “the people we’ll put up against a wall in a heartbeat if given half a chance.”

You get lumped in with SOCONs because you are either part of the leftists’ hive or you are an enemy of the people. There are no degrees of being an enemy. Libertarians who don’t understand that and think the Progressives don’t hate them are first class, useful idiots.

I confess that I’m often meanly amused by writers and talking heads who insist that they “know all about libertarianism”. This “knowledge” generally consists of “I read a couple of chapters of Atlas Shrugged when I was a freshman. I decided it was bullshit and threw the book away.”

When you’re face-to-face with such a person it’s doubly hilarious when you tell them that Ayn Rand wasn’t a libertarian. They get that “baffled golden retriever” look.

We’re watching in the flesh a sad, weak, soulless and unfulfilled human consumed by rage and hubris fumble around yelling at clouds as people look on unsure of how to rationalize this depressing display of nothingness.

But enough about Hilary.

“…Donald Trump is a con man, and he is essentially conning his voters to enrich his family…”

Right.

And Obama leveraging his time in power to score a $65 million book deal and maybe even a Netflix show is totes okay.

That many politicians come out of politics richer than they came in is completely ignored because….Trump and his stupid supporters.

If progs were merely smug, it wouldn’t be a problem. They are losing the votes of the average Joe/Jane because their smugness translates into laws and policies that target their lifestyles and jobs, or promotes other preferred groups over them.

You left out the frozen envelope in the NBA draft lottery that got the Knicks the first pick and Ewing. Also, the entirety of Game 6 of the Western Conference Finals between the Lakers and Kings in 2001. Each contributed greatly to Hillary’s loss!

“Solar flares and increased sunspot activity on or around the time of the election interfered with electronic voting machines in some blue precincts resulting in thousands of votes for Hillary going uncounted!”

Well, it was all of those reasons PLUS Trump being a conman who tricked gullible fools.

It’s not an either-or thing, but more of a perfect storm that sadly robbed her majesty of the rightful recognition she deserved.

Speaking of perfect storms, it was actually climate change that undermined her. Climate change was even behind all those other reasons you cite. Sure, the actual changes in average temperature haven’t been as dramatic as models predicted, but that just means climate change is all the more insidious in the way it poisons the weak minds of Comey, sexist Bernie Bros, and hayseed gun-lovers alike into not recognizing what (or who) is best for them.

This is why we must stamp out climate in honor of Gaia and her earthly avatar Hillary!

Turns out ‘Gaia’ is actually a alien imprisoned within the earth for million of years. The Ckintins became aware of this and Hillary hatched a plot to release Gaia in exchange for enough power to dominate mankind for all eternity. The modern theory of anthropomorphic climate change is part of this plot, as industrial emissions help keep Gaia contained.

Fortunately, the newly regenerated Jesus, and his companions ended up going back in time to stop the first attempt at releasing her in 2008. This resulted in Hillary losing the democrat primary. This is all chronicled in the upcoming story “The Easter Invasion”.

Hillary had it all locked up, but Jesus and his companions found out and stopped her sinister plan. However, she got some measure of revenge when she took one of her minion’s AR-15 rifles (known to be a notorious superweapon to the progressives) and using a bumpstock, instantly unloaded a full 30 round magazine in Jesus’ back. Since both of his hearts were destroyed in the attack, he was forced to regenerate into the fourth Jesus.

Nope! Sorry. We no longer get to nitpick what presidents, presidential candidates, or past presidential candidates say. That’s off the table now. “Pay no attention to his insane rambling” is what we’ve been told, and his defenders have bought into it, and we must be fair in applying this new standard.

This is a really foolish line of argument for the party that decries wealth inequality and seeks wealth redistribution. If individualist, self-reliant types ever take the Ds up on their rhetoric… well, it won’t be pretty.

They voted for Hillary, actually. But I’ll admit the fat asses of Trump voters were distributed across the country in such a way as to hand the electoral college to Trump.

What I’m saying is that going by Trump’s favorite map – the county-by-county red/blue map – is both meaningless insofar as it has nothing to do with how electoral college votes are distributed and misleading insofar as it doesn’t reflect where people actually live.

Of course, you have to know this. So you’d rather just lie through your teeth. Asshole.

It’s just too bad those millions of illegal voters are so concentrated in places like CA. So The Hag lost. Maybe if democrats weren’t largely progressive drones in thrall to a hive mind directed by their DNC masters, they might actually hold their people accountable and have better quality candidates who aren’t all sociopathic/psychopathic shitweasels, or absolute Marxist dimwits like Sanders.

My theory was a lazarus pit, just like Ra’s al Ghul. Only difference is that hers doesn’t work very well: she doesn’t actually rejuvenate very much and she also remains a raving lunatic much, much longer after she emerges from the toxic brew.

Remember how she kicked off her campaign with a van trip/listening tour from NY to IA? Town halls with average people (who were all party staffers providing pre-rehearsed questions)? Going into a fast-food place in disguise so she didn’t have to interact with the common people?

In fairness to Hillary, she lost because her party has made a fetish out of hating large sections of the country. Sure, she was a lousy candidate. But it is a pretty tall order to expect a candidate to win the votes of people her own party makes a virtue out of hating.

As smug as Obama can be, he’s at least made token efforts to point out that people in his political tribe shouldn’t be condescending to those who aren’t, and that doing so limits your understanding.

Hillary’s so entitled, arrogant, and paranoid, she can’t even fathom why someone would not vote for her unless it was a conspiracy or a misogynist. Then again, Obama actually won counties that she couldn’t, so he could afford to be magnanimous when he felt like it.

Sadly, most of the attempts Obama made were immediately followed by a comment that instantly revealed that he didn’t even notice the splinter in his own eye even while he was pretty sure you had a plank in yours.

Blacks are starting to figure out how badly you progressives have fucked them over the last fifty years. 2016 showed blacks are starting to migrate away from the democrats and towards republican candidates.

If republicans ever figure out how to properly market their message to blacks, you progs are fucked.

IF the above isn’t her fault, then why is she doubling down on it? If she’s a victim of her party (and not a leader of it), why would she keep spouting the party line? Easy, she is part of that. The deplorables comment is what lost her the election. The speech in Mumbai is basically the deplorables comment on steroids.

You want to take a crack at explaining how Alabama, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Wyoming, West Virginia — heck, with most of the south, and most of our hicks-and-sticks rural stretches — don’t constitute an economic, educational, political, cultural, and moral drag on the United States of America?

She speaks harshly, but her comments are accurate. Much as bigots no longer wish to be known as bigots in America (thanks to a great achievement by our liberal-libertarian alliance), the depleted human residue of our backwaters no longer likes to have its severe deficiencies mentioned.

You want to take a crack at explaining how Alabama, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Wyoming, West Virginia — heck, with most of the south, and most of our hicks-and-sticks rural stretches — don’t constitute an economic, educational, political, cultural, and moral drag on the United States of America?

Yet you progressives remain the same bigoted pieces of shit as you were back in the early days of the progressive movement, like your racist heroes, such as Margaret Sanger, who Hillary has publically idolized.

Arty, if you want to reduce the number of racists in Maerica, commit suicide. Then there will be one less.

Those places generally don’t hand out near monopoly previlages to elites and their businesses thereby forgoing the race to set up HQs in blue states. Those blue states all hate free markets. Why support free markets when you can buy favors from team blue? Then… Those companies rake in gazillions of dollars which makes the GDP of those places look nice.

Stop having corrupt city and state governments selling favors and you would see a much more wide spread of industries across the county. Plus… Those places have geographic advantages such as ocean access and beachfront properties. Neither of those have to do with politics (except the subsidization of beachfront real estate by those of us in flyover country). I love OK. But it gets old to look at fast. Sure, it aint perfect… but I have literally never met nicer people in the world. Maybe an old woman in a German bakery but that might be it.

You do know that most of the poorest states in the US, especially the south, are largely poor because they have large black populations right? Look up the statistics.

If you look at white only income in a lot of those states, they’re actually doing just fine. And even still, many of the poorer areas have less debt, more balanced budgets, etc. Oh, and the cost of living is a lot lower, so their real standard of living is actually comparable to better than living in coastal states. It’s a fact, look it up!

That said, their economies have done so so because the major industries in their areas have not done well in recent decades… It happens. What’s hot one day can become not hot the next.

San Francisco could be the next Detroit if China or India takes the lead in the tech industry in 10 or 20 years. Detroit was the wealthiest city in the country, and the rug got pulled out from under them by the market, AND they made it doubly worse with bad policy.

I’m reasonably well-educated and intelligent. I didn’t vote for Trump, doing the usual “Burn it for the LP” routine, but if I had to pick, I sure as hell wouldn’t vote for Clinton. And I’m not at all a Trump fan. He might end up better than the last few presidents, maybe, but that’s a very low bar.

He sucks, too, and won’t stop the spending or restore the Constitution, but screw the harpy.

Perhaps a few young Americans — the people who will continue to improve our electorate by replacing cranky old right-wingers who take their stale thinking to the grave — haven’t observed enough of the Republican-conservative approach yet.

Arty if you and your proggy pals ever want to go all in and play for,all the marbles, I’m game. I would love to have the kind of vicious, nasty street war with you commie traitors that I know we will win.

You’re over. If you ever get to run again, it will be to the devastating detriment of the Democrat Party. If they had any sense they would arrange to have you terminated before you drag them any further down.

You didn’t win the ‘looking forward’ vote. You won the “We control the area so thoroughly we can file millions of fraudulent ballots’ vote.

“You’re over. If you ever get to run again, it will be to the devastating detriment of the Democrat Party.”

This is what she doesn’t seem to understand. At least going by the diehard Dem weirdos I run into (which are admittedly rank-and-file supporters and not party operatives), they’ve long since moved on from the old harpie.

I’ve heard them talk about Cory Booker, Michelle Obama, Elizabeth Warren, Oprah, etc. All/most of these might be pipe dreams, but the point is NO ONE seems to be saying, “give HER just one more chance and she will win this time.”

Honestly, even during this past election no one I knew that was a Democrat was really shilling for Killary they were all Bernie types.

The exception to that are Democrats that I know who are/were in their 60’s who seemed to support Hillary but even then it seemed like their main reason for supporting her was because they were entirely clueless about her in particular and, more tellingly, they were all enamored of the prior Clinton administration.

Dismissing substantive, careful criticisms of Trump support as merely “smug” doesn’t exactly help, either, insofar as it convinces those same “smug” liberals that you’re more interested in playing the “whatabout” game than figuring out how to fix this clusterfuck we’re in.

I simply do not understand the logic of lecturing liberals to be less “smug” in criticizing a demographic consisting of people who (apparently) can’t respond that kind of criticism except by doubling down on their own churlish idiocy. It is exactly like telling a parent not to scold a child, lest the child throw a tantrum. Either they deserve to be treated like children, or they don’t. If they don’t, then liberals’ being “smug” shouldn’t be a problem for them. If they do, then why is anyone telling liberals to pretend otherwise?

If you think people who disagree with you are children , you are smug. Fuck you if you don’t like being called that. Get smarter. AndTrump won the election without dipshits like you. So no one needs to convince you and people like you if anything.

For once, I would love to disagree with a Trump supporter who could provide an argument in favor of one of his policies. Tax cuts. Immigration reform. Whatever. Trying to discuss these issues with a Trump supporter is like trying to debate Trump’s Twitter feed.

I don’t call Trump supporters children because I disagree with them. I call them that because they act like children. And I’m not sure whether you intended to be a case in point.

We had a tax system that punished corporations for bringing money they made overseas and investing it in the US. Our corporate tax rate was the highest in the world and put us at a huge competitive disadvantage. You have never heard of these issues? Just how fucking stupid are you?

We 11 million illegal immigrants. We have no control over our borders and face a real threat from the crime and terrorism associated with it. Moreover, people have a right to demand their government control their borders and are under no obligation to let anyone who wants to come here in. Maybe you are really this stupid or live in a cave or something, but immigration is an enormously complex and problematic issue that strikes at the core of what it means to be a sovereignty. You have never heard anyone make an argument about this issue?

You are a first class dolt. You are ignorant and think you can cover this fact up by being smug. Sorry but it doesn’t work. You are pretty much a perfect example of the progressive idiot. Dumb as fucking post, totally irrational but convinced the proble is that everyone else is that way.

We had a tax system that punished corporations for bringing money they made overseas and investing it in the US.

We could have fixed that without charging $1.5 trillion to the national credit card.

Our corporate tax rate was the highest in the world and put us at a huge competitive disadvantage.

It wasn’t the highest, and what this talking point conveniently omits is that most other nations use a different mix of taxes, including corporate and individual income taxes and VAT (which we do not have) to raise the same revenue. So this is just a false way to characterize the situation.

We have no control over our borders and face a real threat from the crime and terrorism associated with it.

“Crime” and “terrorism” the evidence of which is pretty conspicuously absent. And the idea that we have “no control” over our borders is laughable. We have quite robust measures in place to control the flow of immigrants into the country and to catch them while they’re here.

The US had the highest corporate tax rate in the OECD which, using hillary’s definition (and yours) of what matters, does make it the highest in the “world.” And I must say it’s pretty rich for the guy who claims to win every argument to not know the differenve between a corporate income tax and individual income or excise taxes. You also seem to believe that we can tax our way out of debt.

For once, I would love to disagree with a Trump supporter who could provide an argument in favor of one of his policies.

You are pretty good at irony since none of the things you’ve stated qualify as evidence of anything other than your ability to make off-hand remarks without any evidence.

There are pretty good arguments for lowering taxes. Many, in fact. Raising the deficit isn’t something you’ll find a lot of supporters of around here, but notably Democrats also raised the deficit. Is your claim that Trump’s deficit (after 8 years of Obama deficit) is somehow worse? How? Why? Was Keynes right in your view, or wrong?

The left also believes that it has a literal fundamental right to the labor of a selected class of citizens. Furthermore, they claim this will have no effect upon demand. RE: Healthcare. Delusional covers that base, I say, and the whole nation has eaten up this new notion of an enslaved class of public workers. (It’s not new at all, in fact.)

Ludicrous. Perhaps even worse is that the right, seeing how successful the free shit campaign has been, are joining in and getting back to their Progressive tendencies.

So who should we vote for? The Progressive left or the Progressive right? Heads I win, tails you lose.

Moreover, people have a right to demand their government control their borders and are under no obligation to let anyone who wants to come here in.

Do they have a right to demand the government control the flow of individuals across state lines, as well? States are “sovereign” in our system too, you know.

The flawed premise here is this notion that this country is somehow “ours,” like a home that we own. But it’s not our property. It doesn’t belong to us. But we don’t own the country any more than we own the city or state we live in. We don’t have any natural right to control where other people want to move or live. How does the notion of “sovereignty” change that?

Maybe you are really this stupid or live in a cave or something, but immigration is an enormously complex and problematic issue that strikes at the core of what it means to be a sovereignty. You have never heard anyone make an argument about this issue?

I haven’t heard anyone make a coherent argument that state sovereignty entitled populations to arbitrarily bar entry of any group of migrants they might happen to want to exclude. Present company included.

You are a first class dolt.

Like I said, one day, maybe, I’ll find a Trump supporter who can actually piece together an argument worth responding to.

“The flawed premise here is this notion that this country is somehow “ours,” like a home that we own. But it’s not our property. It doesn’t belong to us. But we don’t own the country any more than we own the city or state we live in. We don’t have any natural right to control where other people want to move or live. How does the notion of “sovereignty” change that?”

The country is ours. Our sovereign borders are defined and universally recognized internationally. The control and security of those borders, plus the naturalization of individuals are all spelled out in the constitution. Did you never take a civics class? Are you truly ignorant of these most basic facts?

States and cities also have defined borders and governments, also universally accepted. Again, how is this confusing to you? You’re making vague philosophical arguments like some college freshman.

That you don’t agree with that means nothing. These are simple verifiable facts. Do you seriously expect anyone with an education to indulge you in some meaningless, endless faux philosophical argument based on cool,etc ignorance?

I would have been in favor of revenue-neutral tax reform resulting in a simplification of the tax code. But what we got was a front-loaded tax stimulus plan that will force a lot of hard decisions in a few years, all predicated on the expectation that our economy will continue to do well for that entire period of time. What’s more, we probably don’t even know the worst of it yet. I’ll bet that tax collections come in way under projections, due to confusion about the rules, lack of regulation and enforcement, and simple gaming of loopholes.

1.5TT has no impact relative to the 80+TT in unfunded liabilities. Anyone who thinks this tax cut has any meaningful impact on the drivers of our debt is an idiot. But you are holding to the pattern of all lefties. Your set of real whole numbers ends when you run out of appendages so you just resort to “many.”

Where exactly in Hillary’s “woe is me” tantrum did the substantive, careful criticism appear? That clueless bitch ran one of the worst presidential campaigns in history, despite being considered “inevitable” by even the people who hate her guts, and she lost to a real-estate huckster and reality TV star as a result. And rather than taking responsibility for her failure, she’s spent the last year-plus blaming everything and everyone other than herself, because in her hubris she expected that this would be the coronation she deserved.

No one with a lick of self-respect should feel bad for her in the least.

Now let’s think about this. If people do not think that the country is headed in the right direction, and 75% of the population had that opinion before the election, Isn’t it normal and natural to look back to when the country was headed in the right direction and think that maybe we should get back to that? Doesn’t that match the cliche; when you find yourself in a deep hole- stop digging? Her comment demonstrates just how badly out of touch with reality that she was and is. She thinks that looking back to see where we have gone wrong and find a better path is somehow regressive. Thank GOD she lost the election!

This is the most butthurt I’m aware of from a losing (major-party) candidate since 1824. Back then, Andrew Jackson moaned that JQ Adams and Henry Clay, cheated him out of the election, but at least Jackson had the – I won’t call it class but basic sense – not to blame the dumb retarded voters for his loss.

So while Jackson made a comeback in 1828 as a populist candidate, it’s hard to see Hillary doing it.

“This time you dumb hicks better vote for me, what’s the matter with you?”

I regret the damage being inflicted upon my country, but I am grateful my children (properly educated, residing in successful communities rather than in our shambling rural and southern stretches) will have the same opportunity from which I benefited greatly — the chance to compete economically with these yahoos.

This may seem “smug” to some, but I lost my much of my taste for political correctness recently.

I now call a bigot a bigot, a depleted backwater a depleted backwater, and a half-educated, economically inadequate, disaffected, intolerant, superstition goober an ardent Trump supporter.

Arthur is a special bread of retard who washed up with the Volk conspiracy. The terrifying part is that he doesn’t seem to be a troll or a spoof. He really is that stupid and backward. You shouldn’t gawk but sometimes you can’t help it.

He is so disparaging in his left-wingness, that I wonder how he squares that with his faith as a minister. I mean, he’d probably be the first to acknowledge that many of the most religious-minded people are on the opposite side from him.

I’d even bet some of his congregants would not see eye to eye with him. I hope he is tactful enough to keep his political views under his hat when he’s ministering or shepherding, or whatever they call it.

Okay. I vaguely remember that movie but would not have remembered the name of Pacino’s character.

I actually pictured this guy with a white clerical collar, pocket Bible, and all the trappings!

But then I prefer to imagine commenters here according to their handles. So I picture Crusty Juggler as an actual circus clown, Fist of Etiquette is a very polite boxer or MMA guy, Best Used Car Sales is a sort of stereotypical high-pressure sales guy in a rumpled suit jacket and loosened tie, etc.

And you can probably guess how I imagine Palin’s Buttplug must look. Let’s just say he is frequently uncomfortable and squirming in his chair as he types out his drivel.

You do realize that ‘lived or moved to a place where people are successful’ doesn’t speak well of their education and that if they were truly educated in an apt or functional manner the success of their community wouldn’t matter, right?

Hollywood is rife with successful actors who didn’t complete their HS education and there are tons of successful urban centers all over the country rife with Ph.D.s who are barely scraping by.

I regret the damage being inflicted upon my country, but I am grateful my children (properly educated, residing in successful communities rather than in our shambling rural and southern stretches) will have the same opportunity from which I benefited greatly — the chance to compete economically with these yahoos.

These yahoos honestly need to spend a few years in some of the states and cities they so ardently hate, just to see how thoroughly outclassed they really are. They think liberals are “smug” out of some kind of empty elitism. Well, try applying for the same jobs they do, then, punk. Try keeping your start-up or small business afloat in the same market. Let’s see what you’re actually capable of, Biff, when you’re no longer the big fish in the small pond.

Or more likely… we weren’t born with the silver spoon connections to the corrupt local govt/business cabal which is why we couldn’t “hack it” in a place like Chicago or NYC. Maybe the start-ups succeed in the suburbs and middle America precisely because us backwater plebes believe in merit not family name. If I moved to one of those places and tried to start a business I would be sued out of existence PDQ by some connected and already estaished slush fund generator of some local politician. Of course I couldn’t make it in such a market. To think I should be able to belies you ignorance of how the fixed game in those “successful” cities works.

Yeah, I live in the Peoples Republic Of Seattle… I know all about it buddy! And I’m originally from the Bay Area.

I’ve had enough of this shit, and will be moving out of here in the next couple years, AND taking my multiple businesses I own with me! The taxes and nonsense regulations are why the businesses need to move, but the idiotic socialists I have to deal with everywhere are my PERSONAL reasons I can’t stand this place anymore.

I am a conservative libertarian, BUT I’m not totally dogmatic. There are leftist positions I can understand why some people who don’t understand economics might have. Same on social issues, since I largely agree with the left to a certain point on these. But the kind of Democrat that I can stomach is something like a JFK, or MAYBE Bill Clinton in the 90s. The modern variety, at least on the coasts, is batshit crazy. They’ve gone over the deep end. And I can’t stand being around these type of people anymore.

It IS fun to do real life trolling of lefties, but I’ve had my fill of making them look like ignorant idiots in bar conversations. I’m moving somewhere with better taxes, lower cost of living so I can be even more baller than I am here, and sane people! Bible thumpers will annoy me too on some things, but at this point I’ll take them over champagne socialists!

If she were a coach of a losing team, she would say “we won the last half of the third quarter, and the other team just scored more points, so we won”. Or “we won 5 of the nine innings, and the other team just scored more runs, so we won”.

Maybe by this time she realizes that the only way to outflank her left-wing critics, who are mad that the Dem leaders rigged the system against Bernie and then proceeded to lose anyway – is to blame everything on Trump and Trump voters. And dialing down of the #resist rhetoric will give the old Bernie supporters the chance to focus on Hillary’s numerous flaws as a candidate. But as a #Resistance leader, Hillary will be able to dismiss left-wing critics as Trump dupes.

We should strive to help the struggling, the gullible, the disadvantaged. In particular, we should ensure a strong lifeline for young people who wish to depart substandard environments for education and opportunity on strong campuses and in strong communities. (We need all of the skilled, educated, decent citizens we can get.)

We should reward effort, skill, and responsible risk, while diminishing unearned privilege.

We should be empathetic and open-minded, but we should neither sugarcoat nor appease ignorance, bigotry, dysfunction, or backwardness. Competent people neither advance nor accept superstition-based arguments or assertions in reasoned debate among adults.

America has experienced successive waves of know-nothing intolerance, often tied to immigration, religion, or skin color, before — Jews, Irish, blacks, Italians, eastern Europeans, Latinos, Asians, Catholics — and intolerance and ignorance have never been good long-term bets among Americans. This latest batch of bigots seems nothing special, its reliance on the charms, insights, and reliability of Donald J. Trump notwithstanding.

Lives in New Haven: Check. Former barista: Check. Black: Check. Muslim: Check. Inspired by a speech by a guy who did a documentary called “Stay Woke”: Check Masked bicycle vigilante who pulls over Uber drivers for running red lights: Check Homeschooled through seventh grade: Hmmm… Also pulls over taxis: Hmmm…

America’s liberal-libertarian alliance has been generating American progress — against the efforts and preferences of conservatives — for more than a half-century. That progress has been shoved down conservative throats on dozens of issues.

Haha. I can’t say you’re wrong about the left shoving stuff down half the countries throat… But “cranky” doesn’t entirely describe how pissed some people are. I do often wonder what some leftists think is going to happen if/when they finally go too far. Those silly conservatives own like 80% of the guns, aren’t pussies, and have far more utilitarian life skills than the lefties, which are either cubicle working corporate tools, or welfare queens… If the right ever gets pushed to far, it’s game over for all the progtards in this country, and they seem to not even know it!

It’s people who believe force masked as government applied to others with a backstop of violence to ensure compliance is mortally good versus freedom.

What you don’t get is that in that first group there’s a bunch of disagreement on which issues and upon which group the government should be used upon. Those disagreements usually run along liberal vs conservative lines (which usually looks like Den v GOP but in reality it is more likely to be Den AND GOP v conservative).

What you can’t seem to grasp is that both the left and right are both wrong for the same reason. They both don’t tolerate freedom.

Who needs to be elected? Every voter who slaps a libertarian vote on the table has ELECTED freedom as clearly as can be managed. That and the looters losing their seats in elections leveraged by libertarian spoiler votes is all it takes to change bad laws. If some poor bastard donating his time and effort is unlucky enough to be condemned to rub elbows with kleptocracy looters while explaining their chicanery to voters, that eternal vigilance is the cost of freedom.

Todays party is so… anti-JFK. Nobody’s perfect, but he dreamed big, screwed up in Cuba, got a man on the moon and all that. He loved his country. Today’s democrat nearly hates everything: God, country, their neighbors and themselves. Hillary wants to cater to that, which is a recipe for self destruction [where a nation is concerned]. She put out the hate, and it came back to her. Funny how the universe works…

The American electorate becomes less rural, less backward, less religious, less white, and less bigoted just about every day, Rebel Scum. Unless Republicans perfect a machine that mass-produces half-educated, unskilled, intolerance, rural, disaffected, superstitious, older white males (and figure a way to register the newly minted yahoos to vote), the demographic wave is my friend.

Do you believe in sugarcoating or appeasing ignorance, intolerance, backwardness, and dysfunction? If so, why?

Don’t worry Rev., whites still control almost the entire net worth of the country, most businesses, important professions, political offices, and just generally run circles around ever other group proportionally (other than those exceptionally gifted jews)… I mean apartheid was held down in South Africa by only about 20% of the population, and they decided to give it up peacefully, if they had decided to hold onto it they’d still be running things. Crackers will still be running most important things in this country for a loooooooong time to come.

And yet you wonder why Democrats keep losing elections. To think that anyone who lives in a rural area, is religious or white is somehow less intelligent or worthy than you demonstrates the arrogance that so many of us find pathetic. I grew up in what is considered rural Texas and still live outside “urban DFW”, yet I seriously doubt anything you claim I am is true. All you prove is progressives do all possess one defining characteristic, arrogance and they have it by the truckload.

Hillary’s Party Platform: Democrats believe that carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases should be priced to reflect their negative externalities, and to accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy and help meet our climate goals. … We support President Obama’s decision to reject the Keystone XL pipeline. As we continue working to reduce carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gas emissions… We will support developing countries in their efforts to mitigate carbon pollution and other greenhouse gases… Puerto Rico is the example of all this–a crippled Starnesville with blackouts instead of food and water.

And my platform involves clean energy from Unicorn farts and Kathryn Winnick deciding to have sex with me. It is actually more connected to reality than yours. At least Kathryn Winnick is a real person.

Don’t forget needing a pharmacy’s worth of anti-depressants and moaning to your therapist about how daddy didn’t love you enough. That seems to be a requisite for the rootless cosmopolitan lifestyle just as much as the others.

Hand on to your wallet, Eidde. They have formed committes, and all manner of legal artifices so that neighbors can pick your pocket while hiding behind the curtain. If you want Bernie land, they will welcome a new sucker. Don’t complain about your cost of living suddenly being 25-40% higher there: I am going to laugh.

She wonders why she lost? Yet again she calls the entire middle of the country racists and backwards but cant understand why she lost. Hillary has to be the most out of touch with reality human on the planet. She blames everyone but herself and is also too stupid to realize there is an entire country between those “forward looking coasts” she relishes. Every time she opens her mouth, I thank God and again acknowledge just how large of a bullet we dodged by her losing. If she would have been President, this country would have never been the same because like Obama she would have shredded the Constitution in the name of “progress” and the US would have likely ceased to exist. Hillary is a sociopath and her constant parade of excuses and attacks on those who did not vote for her only demonstrates how dangerous she truly is and why she can never be allowed to have any real power.

Trump isn’t all that ‘right wing’. More of a results oriented pragmatist. If you could pull your head out of your progtarded ass for a few minutes you might actually be capable of some rudimentary cognitive analysis of the facts.

Not at my level of course, but that was never going to happen. Considering your limited intellect. I know how hard it is for most of you neuro typicals to sustain rational thought to begin with, and you are clearly at the unfortunate end of the bell curve.

Heck, I’ve worked with a lot of LP activists over the years who were just as guilty. I can’t tell you how many state fair booths I’ve shared with LPers who tell each other that the voters are all stupid uneducated lemmings for supporting the Republicrats and the Demopublicans, and if they only saw the light and understood, they’d all be Libertarians.

Most people aren’t that smart, and even those that are don’t spend a lot of time really figuring politics, economics, etc out. So some dumb folks knee jerk to being socialists, and other knee jerk to being conservative. I don’t think many people who hold correct views arrived at them by the proper methods in many cases, they just happened to go there by chance or gut instinct.

That still doesn’t mean I won’t gladly side with such a non thinker against socialists though!

The democrats have always won the coast. Trump won enough places that voted for Obama in two previous elections to prevail in the electoral college. He won two big swing states AND Pennsylvania and Michigan.

So nothing changed, except that Trump actually gained on areas that were purplish to blue. Clinton got the votes from fellow elitist and wannabe Marxists below the bourgeois class (a certifiable legion) who would essentially vote for the likes of Nicolas Maduro in another land.

Like 90% of Californians have nothing do with the GDP of the region. The state’s bread and butter is tech, info, and stocks. They benefit from trade, but much of that field is union territory.

That makes sense at the end of the day. As a great admirer of Margaret Sanger, Hillary can be nothing but a misanthrope. Dems mostly hate each other, with a tacit understanding of silence/hands off for those who get in line and put party uber alles. Hillary’s list is dynamic, and ready to be applied to any opposition in Stalinist fashion.

Having said it out loud lots of times, and it having not been effective as a rhetorical move to shift the political landscape in the direction that you want, why not try another tack?

Another tack? KMW obviously doesn’t understand Trump Derangement Syndrome and the triggering effect it has on its adherents. It’s an automatised, reflexive mental state. It’s a psychosis. They *have* no other tack.

Sure, they attempt cool, considered analysis but the mask soon falls away and the ranting begins anew.

I do think Donald Trump is a con man, and he is essentially conning his voters to enrich his family.

If that nutty, conspiracist view is widespread then there is no alternative tack. All you have left is hyperplexy.

Great observations, Katherine. This shouldn’t be so controversial when it’s so obvious, but you’re correct: they feed off one another. It’s a feedback loop of mindlessness.

This really goes to show just how out of touch the mainstream Democratic establishment really is. We’re now over 1/4 of the way through Trump’s first term, and we still have his challenger going overseas to explain away why she lost. No new insights. No introspection. No ideas.

It’s nothing short of amazing that Clinton’s campaign could help rig her nomination with the DNC, insult rural America, shame fellow Democrats for not supporting her, and yet still believe she would get the votes.

Nobody said it, but I would expect she attempted a rough extrapolation of population density vs. median income. The map that went up and kept turning more and more red in November of 2016 is burned in her brain. Like most commenters here, I breathe a sigh of relief knowing this bundle of screech and desperation did not get the levers of power.

“So I won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward. “”

Courtesy of Warren Meyer, Coyote Blog:

Progressive elements in this country have always tried to freeze commerce, to lock this country’s economy down in its then-current patterns. Progressives in the late 19th century were terrified the American economy was shifting from agriculture to industry. They wanted to stop this, to cement in place patterns where 80-90% of Americans worked on farms. I, for one, am glad they failed, since for all of the soft glow we have in this country around our description of the family farmer, farming was and can still be a brutal, dawn to dusk endeavor that never really rewards the work people put into it.

This story of progressives trying to stop history has continued to repeat itself through the generations. In the seventies and eighties, progressives tried to maintain the traditional dominance of heavy industry like steel and automotive, and to prevent the shift of these industries overseas in favor of more service-oriented industries. Just like the passing of agriculture to industry a century ago inflamed progressives, so too does the current passing of heavy industry to services.

In fact, here is a sure fire test for a progressive. If given a choice between two worlds:

A capitalist society where the overall levels of wealth and technology continue to increase, though in a pattern that is dynamic, chaotic, generally unpredictable, and whose rewards are unevenly distributed, or…

A “progressive” society where everyone is poorer, but income is generally more evenly distributed. In this society, jobs and pay and industries change only very slowly, and people have good assurances that they will continue to have what they have today, with little downside but also with very little upside.

Progressives will choose #2. Even if it means everyone is poorer. Even if it cuts off any future improvements we might gain in technology or wealth or lifespan or whatever. They want to take what we have today, divide it up more equally, and then live to eternity with just that. Progressives want #2 today, and they wanted it just as much in 1900.

No, not if everyone is poorer. Only if everyone else is poorer. Look at Sanders, making his re-distributive noises, while owning three dachas and flying on private planes.

The “progressives”, (Which is just yet another euphemism for communists to hide behind.) want a government capable of redistribution, because the true owner of anything is he who dictates where it goes. When the government can redistribute, the government is the true owner of everything, and being run by ‘progressives’, guess who ends up wealthy?

When discussing what Communism is with my HS students they quickly saw the sham. We discussed how the ideology is supposed to be about equality and that the govt would manage that by taking everything. Hands went up… “If everyone is supposed to be equal, then what about the people in government? There’s no way they’re going to live like everyone else!”

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There she goes again. Hope she keeps whining, because as long as the Clintons are sucking up all the air in the room, the DNC will remain flat on its [intellectual] back. The coasts are where the media is, which is why they remain so warped: staying on the wrong side of the looking glass isn’t easy, and requires continuous reinforcement so that individuals don’t do their own analysis of events and conditions. Middle america only gets bombarded with bull during election cycles, with the intermittant propaganda piece in their local papers penned by one of their own during the interim – outsider columns don’t carry the same weight in my estimation.

Hillary amazes me. I really cannot imagine how one person could be so delusional. What she said was not only insulting, it was a very clear indication of exactly why she was not elected. She views the entire center of the country with contempt and thinks only those on the coasts should have the right and ability to govern.

At this point I think Hillary has to tell that story 1) for her own sanity and 2) in hopes that whatever legacy she leaves will not be that she was a terrible terrible candidate.

Even though progressives claim to f-ing love science, they seem f-ing terrible at math. If you spend any time reading about the election results, the smug narrative of why Hillary lost just doesn’t hold water. Trump should have easily lost that election, but the Democrats picked a disaster to represent them. (An even more disastrous indicator is that their #2 guy was Bernie.)

Hillary lost because every time she opened her mouth she lied and/or she said something that reminded voters why they hated her. Her attitude about “common people” has always been one of contempt and since her second loss, all she has done is make this fact crystal clear. The fact she is unable to accept she was why she lost is not new for her.

The multiple smug narratives of why Hillary lost don’t hold water. Not one of them. Russia, Jill Stein, Bernie Bros, media coverage (like PLEASE, the media eye-fucked her every chance it got), electoral college blah blah blah. She lost because she’s a lying sack of murderous shit and voters could see right through her.

Sanders is a crazy old commie coot, but you’ve got to hand it to him, what’s he been doing since Hillary and her army of smug, vicious, passive-aggressive menopausal cunts cheated like gypsies to wrest the nomination away from him? Working. He’s been out there hustling. Doing his job and then some.

What’s Hillary been doing? Licking her wounds. Writing a bitchy, whiny, sore-loser book that blames everybody but herself and ignores the fact that you can smell corruption on her from 1000 miles away. Going on tour to promote the book. Not bothering to lift a finger to support her fellow party members in one-off races around the country, even though she and her flying monkeys went after Sanders in the primary season for “not supporting down-ticket Democrats.” Holing up in Chappaqua to drink staggering quantities of liquor and bitch to other rich, blonde WASP hags about the great unwashed and how she was entitled to their votes, and yet could barely conceal her contempt for them during her campaign.

It’s too late for her to quit while she’s ahead, that’s for sure. She just needs to STFU and go away.

Dear Reason. This article is about a purveyor of hatred against specific people groups, and you have a moral obligation to refrain from assisting her in spreading those hate filled words. This is common sense free speech control.

I’m not sure about her response that basically says, “smug liberals are right, Trump conned the idiots, but don’t say it out loud, that’s what makes you smug.” The smugness from the left goes way beyond simply not saying something smug. It’s the attitude of smug and really the fact that the smugness is completely based on obvious falsity much of the time. I mean, the whole idea that you look at Trump and say, “oh, he just conned all the idiots”, but then turn around and swoon at how great Hillary was without seeing her great attempt at conning you is the problem with the smug. The problem with being smug is when it is obvious your smugness is based on a fairly high level of ignorance and bias. That’s what makes the smugness so distasteful and such a problem for the left. The lesson of simply not saying things out loud is such a surface level approach it ironically fits right in to what I said about the actual problem with smugness: expressing knowledge and elitism while clearly ignorant and biased on an issue. It’s like when John Oliver does a whole show on how federal transportation taxes have not increased in a long time and how America’s roads are falling apart because of it, but never once mentions state taxes and state department’s of transportation infrastructure responsibility, thus showing a tremendous amount of ignorance and bias. That is the smugness that many liberals exude.